In the field of production printing, incoming print jobs may comprise thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of printed pages. These jobs may therefore be extremely expensive to print, and may take weeks to complete. Because incoming jobs are so large and expensive, it is desirable to ensure that the jobs are printed correctly on the first run. In order to ensure that the job will print as desired, operators often perform a test print of a job where a sample of the pages of the job are printed. The pages of the test print may then be reviewed in order to check for problems with color, for typos, for general print quality concerns, etc.
Unfortunately, the quality at which a print job will be printed often is a function of cost, and an excellent quality print job may cost substantially more than a print job that simply meets the quality standards of the print shop. This means that if the best print quality is selected every time, the cost to the customer is substantial, which is undesirable. As such, print shop operators are often forced to carefully balance between cost efficiency and print quality for a given job.